With Its Own Chips, Apple Aims to Define the Future of PCs

Apple has long been the lone wolf of the personal computer industry in maintaining its own operating system instead of licensing Microsoft's Windows as rivals do. Tuesday it struck out further from the pack by launching its first laptops and desktops built on processors designed wholly in house. The silicon shift gives Apple new control over its own destiny--and perhaps the future of the personal computer. The change was long expected. Tuesday the company unveiled the first Macs built on a processor, the M1, designed by Apple's own chip engineers, abandoning the industry's dominant supplier, Intel.